Cookie Notice
HardGaming Forums sets five cookies. Every one of them is required for the forum to work, so there is nothing here to opt into and no consent banner to dismiss. There are no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, and no third party sets a cookie on this site — nothing at all is loaded from another origin.
The cookies
| Name | What it does | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
hardgaming_session | Keeps you signed in. Set when you sign in and cleared when you sign out. It is HttpOnly, so no script on the page can read it — including a script somebody managed to inject into a post. | Until you sign out, or the session expires |
redsteel_session | A session cookie under the forum's former name. It is only ever read and cleared — nothing sets it — so that a member signed in before the rename is not silently signed out. | Removed on your next visit |
hardgaming_signed_out | Set only if you sign out while the forum's server cannot be reached. It holds no information about you; it tells the server, the next time it hears from this browser, to finish signing you out here. Removed as soon as it has done that, or when you sign in. | Until the server next hears from this browser |
viewed_posts | The ids of up to the last 100 threads you opened, so that reloading a page does not count as a second view. Stays in your browser. | 24 hours |
forum_visitor | A random identifier, so the “online now” count in the sidebar can tell one signed-out reader from another without knowing who either of them is. Not linked to an account and not used for anything else. | Up to a year |
Local storage, which is not a cookie
A few things are kept in your browser's local storage rather than in a cookie. Local storage is never sent to the server — it stays on your device until you clear it or the forum removes it:
hardgaming:remember-emailhardgaming:post-drafthardgaming:reaction-typeshardgaming:recent-reactions
These hold your email if you asked the sign-in page to remember it, an unsent draft from the composer, and a cached list of the available reactions with the ones you use most. Keys left over from earlier versions of the forum are deleted automatically the next time you open it.
Turning them off
Your browser can block or delete cookies for this site. Blocking hardgaming_session means you will not be able to stay signed in; everything else continues to work, and reading the forum needs no cookies at all.
See also the Privacy Policy.